Page:Castes and Tribes of Southern India, Volume 3.djvu/410

KONDH the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1906, became wildly excited when they came across this relic of their former barbarous custom. "The best known case," Mr. Frazer writes,* "of human sacrifices systematically offered to ensure good crops is supplied by the Khonds or Kandhs. Our knowledge of them is derived from the accounts written by British officers, who, forty or fifty years ago, were engaged in putting them down. The sacrifices were offered to the earth goddess, Tari Pennu or Bera Pennu, and were believed to ensure good crops, and immunity from all diseases and accidents. In particular, they were considered necessary in the cultivation of turmeric, the Khonds arguing that the turmeric could not have a deep red colour without the shedding of blood. The victim, a Meriah, was acceptable to the goddess only if he had been purchased, or had been born a victim, that is the son of a victim father, or had been devoted as a child by his father or guardian."

In 1837, Mr. Russell, in a report on the districts entrusted to his control, wrote as follows. † "The ceremonies attending the barbarous rite, and still more the mode of destroying life, vary in different parts of the country. In the Māliahs of Goomsur, the sacrifice is offered annually to Thadha Pennoo (the earth) under the effigy of a bird intended to represent a peacock, with the view of propitiating the deity to grant favourable seasons and crops. The ceremony is performed at the expense of, and in rotation by, certain mootahs (settlements) composing a community, and connected together from local circumstances. Besides these periodical sacrifices,